Hey just bought our first house and am a little lost. Excuse my ignorance upfront and thanks for any help in advance.

There's a large concrete pad in our backyard with maybe an inch gap between it and the foundation of the house. It is filled with a sort of felt like material and then there was a layer of caulking or similar material filled in over that. The problem is that over the years the caulking has deteriorated and is pretty much gone leaving the felt like material exposed. As the felt is exposed, it has absorbed water. So I want to re-caulk this gap but the felt is wet. What should I do?

that blk stuff's isolation joint material ( asphalt cement impregnated fiber board ) & will degrade naturally over the yrs,,, the accepted joint sealing standard's to clean the jnt down to about as deep as the jnt is wide,,, since any sealant will NOT adhere to the stuff, you won't need any backer rod,,, suggest you clean the jnt walls VERY well then use 100% silicone seal to reseal the jnt,,, NEVER use caulk ! we've done miles of hgwy/airport jnts this way.

Update, some parts of the gap were pretty deep and I used backer rod and in others I didn't. I should have used more as I ended up using 4 tubes of silicon and it's still not really level with the concrete pad.